


The Year We Fell

by DaraOakwise



Category: Doctor Who, The Thick Of It
Genre: F/M, The Thick Of Unit, crackship crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:37:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5465111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaraOakwise/pseuds/DaraOakwise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cybermen, rebel Time Lords, airplane crashes, Zygons: UNIT has the year from hell. And Malcolm Tucker and Kate Stewart fall apart, then put themselves back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Year We Fell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nehszriah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nehszriah/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Thick of UNIT](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4932334) by [Nehszriah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nehszriah/pseuds/Nehszriah). 



> This story is inspired by Neh's The Thick of UNIT AU. It may or may not ultimately fit in any direction she wants to go. But kick-ass bureaucrats saving the world is always fun. This one is definitely rated M. And maybe pushing just a bit beyond, for the filthiest thing I've ever put in Malcolm's mouth. And sexytimes.

 

 

When Kate Stewart reluctantly left Malcolm Tucker at Mainframe UK as its Acting Director, since the rest of UNIT's senior leadership was going up in Boat One to serve the fucking President of the World, she'd given him this look, like she feared she was never going to see him again. He'd kissed her, and promised that the Cybermen couldn't convert him without his sheer bloody-mindedness corrupting their entire hive mind. But the first real sign that the entire thing had gone horrifically wrong was when Osgood--the one who had stayed behind--fell to her knees in the central control room, screaming with primal loss.

Malcolm caught her before she completely collapsed to the floor. "Scarfy. Osgood. Fuck, _Petronella_ ," he said urgently.

She grabbed his shirt, holding on. "Oh god, Malcolm," she whispered, her eyes wide and unfocused, looking through him. And he knew. He clenched his jaw and glanced around the control room, full of shocked and curious techs, and pulled her to her feet, mostly-carrying her to the quiet hall behind the control room. Once there, her legs collapsed, and he sat her down against the wall.

"Petronella, love," he said gently, taking her hand. "Pet, look at me," but she just stared, anguished, into the middle distance.

He heard the door open. "Malcolm," said a quaking voice behind them.

"Fuck off, Glenn," he snapped.

"Malcolm, you need to come back in here now,"

Malcolm stood and stalked over to the head techie, ready to give him a bollocking, but was stopped dead by the stricken look on the man's face. And the fact that Glenn Fucking Cullen had reached out and grabbed Malcolm's arm, as if Malcolm might be the next person to collapse. "Hurry," Glenn said.

In the control room, a message was playing, forwarded from Mainframe Geneva: " _Boat One is going down, we don't anticipate survivors_ ," Kate's was saying. Malcolm knew every nuance of his lover's voice, and in this, her last words, he heard the anguish, not just of her own death but of her monumental failure. Kate was convinced that the Earth was lost.

Glenn had already brought up the telemetry data for the airplane, then the live satellite. "It's breaking up," he said softly, and on the screen, the airplane disintegrated and streaked to the earth in pieces. "Malcolm," Glenn was saying from somewhere far away, and his hand was gripping Malcolm's shoulder now, hard. "You have to breathe, mate."

Malcolm blinked and looked around the room, which had gone grim and silent. His vision was dark at the edges, and he felt as though he were standing outside himself. "What is the status of the cybercloud?" he heard himself say.

"Still spreading, sir," a tech answered, his voice full of fear. "It will fully envelop the Earth within the hour."

Malcolm knew then what Kate had known as she fell from the sky: they'd lost. All of humanity would be converted and soulless before the end of the day. "Cybermen," Malcolm said softly to Glenn. "They delete emotions?"

Glenn nodded.

"Fair enough," Malcolm said, then walked away to join Scarfy in the hall, where she was curled into a sobbing ball on the floor. He slid down the wall beside her, and took her hand, and never could remember anything about the next hour.

But the Cybermen (and the Mistress) had underestimated humanity, especially the dead who had nothing to lose and nothing left but the promise of their love for their children; who burned the sky and died again to save the world. And then Glenn was shaking Malcolm, with Scarfy on her knees at his side, still pale and stricken but apparently more functional than UNIT's Acting Director. He squinted up at her when she put her hands on either side of his face and called him back out of grief.

"She's alive, Malcolm," Osgood said. "Kate's alive."

===========================

It look months for Kate to recover from the injuries she'd received when she was blown out of the airplane. When she was awake, she couldn't remember anything other than a Cyberman catching her and calling her Tiger. When she dreamed, she remembered more, and on the nights that he was with her, Malcolm shook her out of her nightmares and held her for the rest of the night.

The Doctor showed up to visit while Kate was in hospital, in full manic mode and info-dumping with vastly less emotional subtlety than an autistic nine year old. He'd blithely confirmed Kate's worst fear--the Cyberman had been her deceased and converted father. Then he faffed on about how he wasn't _certain_ but he was _relatively sure_ than on a human colony in the distant future, her father's dismembered head had kept him company for 900 years. After the Doctor left, Kate had wept into Malcolm's shirt for hours. Malcolm put out quiet inquiries to star freighters in the system, and even to the trap street in London that UNIT tolerated, but no one had seen a lone Cyberman.

As for himself, Malcolm shouldered the work of the dead directors of Mainframe UK, and single-handedly pieced the shattered organization back together. And always woke himself from his own nightmares, sweaty and shaking, before he disturbed Kate. The truth was, though, between Kate's recovery and the overwhelming amount of work that fell to Malcolm, they didn't spend very many days or nights together.

And they didn't talk about any of it, but neither one of them was particularly well.

A few weeks before the surviving Osgood disappeared for good (despite Malcolm's pleading), Malcolm fell off the wagon in spectacular fashion, drinking himself into oblivion every night he wasn't with Kate. And despite old and tearful promises to his Mam, he also started to quietly, shamefully, burn his mind on cocaine again, his oldest and worst nemesis. Until Glenn showed up at his door on a Friday night and punched him in the face.

"Fucking Christ, Glenn," Malcolm complained. He sacrificed a tea towel to stop the bleeding, and two packages of frozen vegetables for the swelling--one for his face, one for Glenn's hand. "You've been saving that for a while."

"Oh, no," Glenn said, drinking some of Malcolm's whisky before dumping the rest of it down the drain. "That wasn't from me. I'm still entitled to break your nose sometime in the future. That was from Osgood. Where are the drugs?"

"Bedroom nightstand," Malcolm admitted. "You've seen her?" Malcolm asked, putting down the frozen peas and following Glenn down the hall. He was convinced that Osgood had left so she could quietly commit suicide somewhere where her friends wouldn't find her body.

"No," Glenn said reluctantly, digging through the drawer. "No, I haven't seen her, but before she left she texted me and told me I needed to stage an intervention."

"Which you interpreted as punching me in the fucking face?" Malcolm asked.

"No, that was just to get your attention," Glenn said. "It's been hard to get your attention since the Cybermen incident, but I figured it would work. Jesus fucking _fuck_ , Malcolm," he said shakily when he found what he was looking for, and gingerly carried the baggie to the bathroom to flush the powder down the toilet. "Anything else?" Malcolm shook his head, but Glenn started a systematic search through the flat. Glenn pulled another baggie out of the closet, holding it above his head with accusing disappointment, and Malcolm slumped resignedly against the wall.

"Your sponsor--Clayton, I think?-- is on the way here, by the way," Glenn continued. "Lex called him, and she'll be here too. We are apparently tossing your entire flat tonight. Clayton says that if you want to avoid inpatient treatment, he's imposing a mandatory thirty meetings in thirty days."

Malcolm sat on his couch, head in his hands, while Glenn and Clay tore his flat apart, and couldn't look up when his niece arrived. Lex just kissed the top of his head with a sorrowful sigh, and watched him carefully for the signs Clayton had told her would be coming. And although he'd been through it before, Malcolm later admitted to her that he hadn't realized he was already so badly out of control until the shaking started. Glenn, Lex, and Clay sat with him in rotations through the weekend while he sweated miserably through the DTs and the weepy melancholy, and the moment he could stagger to his feet, Clay frog-marched him to the first meeting. The meetings helped, with a lot of things, and Malcolm clawed his way back to tenuous stability and sobriety.

He didn't think that Kate, still in the thick of her own troubles, knew anything about it.

Malcolm was back in control of himself (and newly promoted to Deputy Director), Kate was back at her desk, and UNIT was nearly back on its feet when the powers of the universe decided to fuck with them again. It was apparently Time Lord foreplay to torture lesser species. Or at least it was when the Mistress and the Doctor fucked. (And God, he fucking hated them both.) The devil herself returned from the dead, the fucking Master in drag, and froze the airplanes in the sky. Malcolm had been deployed in the field at the time, dealing with another Zygon incident, and by the time he got back it was all over. Other than explaining the inexplicable to the panicked public, which he did as best he could.

No airplane crashes, this time, and only a few terrible murders to mourn. But, as Jac had quietly revealed to him in a private aside, Kate had frozen up, badly. Indecisive, terrified, failing to think through the angles, they'd finally called in the fucking school teacher to get it sorted. As Kate's partner, Malcolm begged. As her deputy, he threatened. In a dark night of honesty, curled around each other in bed, Kate told Malcolm about her recurring nightmare about falling that always morphed into watching her desiccated father being tortured, and the crushing dread that haunted her during the day. Malcolm quietly told her about the alcohol and the drugs, and the meetings that we're keeping him upright.

The next morning, Kate finally agreed to see a therapist and take the anxiety meds she'd been resisting. They weren't well, not really, but Malcolm let himself hope they were getting better.

===========================

Malcolm had been deployed again, protecting the scattered remains of the legitimate Zygon leadership with a fast-response team in Scotland, when the fucking Zygon problem that had been brewing malevolently underneath everything else magically resolved itself. But not before another fucking airplane crash, the annihilation of an entire special-ops squad, and the murder of many more of UNIT's best and brightest. When Kate's message and another long list of dead colleagues arrived, Malcolm had kicked his field desk over in fury.

Kate sent a helicopter for him so he could attend the emergency debrief, but he wasn't really coming home, not yet. He knew he'd have to endure another bumpy flight back out to his unit before the end of the day. The crisis seemed to be over, but the work of dealing with it wasn't.

He swept into Mainframe UK, still in dusty battle gear (sans the flak vest and helmet which he'd left in the chopper), and ran straight into Kate and Osgood. _Two_ Osgoods, in fact. It would have been tempting to smile at the joy of the sisters reunited, of the rightness them side by side, of seeing even _one_ of them at all, if the alarm bells weren't screaming inside Malcolm's head. But Kate seemed comfortable with it, so he told the alarms to fuck off--until it became apparent that Kate had no fucking idea what had happened either.

"Brigadier, just to clarify, you have no memory whatsoever of what happened in the Black Archive?" Colonel Walsh asked carefully. After the formal debriefing, both Malcolm and Walsh had independently charged up in her office. Mainframe UK's chief military operations commander was clearly unhappy, still jumpy and seething from losing her squad. And, for the first time ever, Malcolm agreed with Walsh completely. There were too many fucking unanswered questions.

"No," Kate answered with a sigh. They'd been going around on the issue for the last ten minutes, and she was tired of it.

Walsh glanced at Malcolm, gauging his position. Malcolm frowned back, supremely dissatisfied at being on her side, especially against Kate. "You were mind-wiped," Malcolm said. It wasn't a question.

Kate slammed her pen down onto her desk. "It seems so," she said. "And I am aware that we have been asked to simply accept that this conflict is over, without fully understanding the motivations of the parties--including, frankly, our own. I am aware that under normal circumstances, we could be seen as opening ourselves up for infiltration and manipulation. However, I also know that the Doctor was present, and he is satisfied with the resolution of this matter. That is more than sufficient for me. Colonel Walsh, Colonel Tucker, I do appreciate your concern, but the matter is closed." The dismissal was clear, and Kate went back to writing letters to the families of the dead, the grim task that Walsh and Malcolm had interrupted with their unscheduled arrival in her office. Walsh saluted crisply and marched for the door; Malcolm, forgetting he was in the uniform he still didn't think he deserved to wear, shoved his hands into his pockets and followed her out.

The door closed behind them, and Walsh caught his arm. "Deputy Director," Colonel Walsh said quietly, so not to be heard by Kate's PA. "That is not an acceptable answer."

"I'm fucking aware of that," Malcolm said wearily, shaking his arm loose and leaning back against Kate's door. He was _tired_. He'd been deployed for weeks, mainlining oranges and Red Bull to stay upright, and between the crisis, crappy bunks, and the consuming worry, hadn't slept. He didn't want to fight with Kate. He hadn't even _seen_ Kate in eight weeks, much less talked to her about anything other than work. He just wanted to take her to bed and make tender love before sleeping for three days.

He was apparently tired enough that his thoughts slipped out on his face. Walsh narrowed her eyes at him. "I know that she's fucking you on the side, Tucker," the soldier hissed. Walsh glanced over at Kate's PA sitting at the other end of the room, who was eying them both, then stepped closer to Malcolm, getting in his face. "She never could keep her knickers on, much less dry, but fucking her own deputy? Frankly, it's a concern. Do you have the balls to actually confront her about anything, or are you just going to go down on your knees under her desk and lick at her cunt until she gives you permission to spill pathetically in your pants?"

Malcolm didn't move, but his expression turned flinty, his voice dangerous. His bollocking face. "Whether and with whom Director Stewart does or does not slick her clit is none of your business. If your cunt matches your face--and it clearly does, because you've gnawed your way up to your own shriveled fucking ovaries--you are drier than a dead camel's foot in the middle of the cunting Sahara. Which is good, because this message will stick when I shove it up your crispy twat: she could have me fucking naked on top of her fucking desk, tied down with my own fucking belt while she sixty-fucking-nines her way through her next orgasm, my tongue up her cunt while she scrapes her teeth up my dick, so fucking _wet_ from grinding her clit across my face that she's sado-fucking-masochistically _waterboarding_ me while I come fucking _helplessly_ in her mouth, just so she can spit my wad down the backside of my balls and use it to lube my fucking prostate; she could be fucking fucking me into her fucking desk so fucking hard that the fucking fuckometers start fucking ringing in the Black fucking Archive, and if I thought that Kate Stewart was endangering this unit, I'd fucking tell her so. If I didn't, she'd bite my fucking bollocks off herself. So fuck off, Walsh. You. Baggy. Chapped. _Cunt_!"

He didn't wait for Walsh to react, but stormed back into Kate's office and dropped bonelessly onto her couch, veins throbbing in his forehead and neck. Kate lifted an eyebrow at him. "Did you take a breath during that at all? It was certainly graphic," she said, squinting speculatively at the top of her desk. She pantomimed some of the moves with her hands, working through the positioning, then shrugged. "We may have to try some of that, on a day when my desk is not so covered in tragedy, assuming you don't give yourself a heart attack first by shouting obscene sexual imagery down the hall. You've just damaged my poor innocent PA for life, by the way. Oh, and hi. Nice to see you, how was your summer?"

"Sorry, love," Malcolm said with a sigh, head back on the couch. "Didn't mean to raise my voice. Old habits. My summer was shite and my dick was lonely. And fucking Walsh doesn't fucking trust you,"

"Well, Malcolm, to be fair, right now you don't either."

He gave her a wan smile. "Kate," he said. "You were mind-wiped, and we're fucking fucked in the dark. We know that the Osgood boxes were activated, but we don't know what they did. We have no idea why or how the Zygon insurrection ended. We don't know where the terrorist leader went. The only people who know anything are the Osgoods, who just walk around singing _Give Peace A Fucking Chance_. And by the way, a second Osgood fucking magically showed up and is wandering around the place like she belongs here, and we have no idea if either one of them is actually fucking human."

Kate rubbed her eyes tiredly. "The Doctor was there."

Malcolm stood up to pace. "Oh, good! The Doctor! Who looks completely different than he did two years ago; who shows up only when he feels like it; who doesn't tell us anything; who habitually abducts and presumably fucks impressionable young women; and who, according to the Shadow Proclamation, may be the most horrific fucking war criminal in the universe. But he was there, so that's all fine, then."

"Malcolm," Kate said, an edge of warning in her voice. "The Doctor has always been this planet's defender, and I trust him."

"That's just great, _Tiger_ ," Malcolm said bitterly. "Daddy's oldest friend, who obviously trusts you so much that he wipes your fucking mind every time he sees you." Malcolm sighed and scrubbed both hands up and down his face to avoid her icy glare. " _Fuck_ ," he said into the frigid silence, "Kate, love, I didn't mean ..."

Kate went back to writing. "Thanks a lot, Malc," she said. "That mark you just crossed? That was the fucking line. Now, please do me a fucking favor and fuck off."

"Kate," Malcolm said pleadingly. She ignored him. "Goddammit, Director. Brigadier." At the use of her rank, she looked up with a sigh. "For the love of God," he continued urgently, desperately. "We have hundreds of people here in this building. Thousands in the field, and all of their lives are at risk. Please, please tell me that we're acting on more than just hope that the Doctor and the Osgoods are telling us the truth."

"Colonel Tucker," Kate answered. "It's all I've got. And you have a helicopter to catch, I believe." He frowned, saluted hard, and banged through her door. Kate's PA jumped, then blushed as he swept past her and down the hall to the elevator.

"Fuck!" he said to the empty corridor, and viciously kicked the elevator doors. "Fucking ..." He kicked the elevator again before riding it down to his office, then stormed through the bullpen where the Communications staff was working. He ignored them as they cringed from his wrath. His PA looked up, startled to see her mercurial boss.

"Malc, I didn't know you were back," she said.

"I'm not. Are the Osgoods still here?" he growled.

"Ah, I'm not sure," she answered a little snarkily. "They don't report their schedule to me."

Malcolm rounded on her. "Just do your fucking job and get them the fuck up here," he snapped. Then he stalked past her and all but slammed his door.

Aparajita raised her eyebrows in shock, then turned back to her computer with a weary sigh. His temper was legendary, but rarely directed at her. Fucking month from hell. Fucking _year_ from hell. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to chase away the headache that had been threatening all day. She nearly jumped out of her skin when she looked up, and Malcolm had materialized at the edge of her desk.

"God, Malcolm," she said reprovingly. "You should be special forces, with how you can sneak up on a person."

He was looking past her, his jaw working. "I would like to clarify and rephrase my previous request," he said. Aparajita smiled faintly at him, and he continued: "will you please check to see if the Osgoods are still here and, if they are, if they wouldn't mind fucking on up to my office."

"I can certainly do that, Colonel Tucker," she said gently. He ruefully met her eyes, then rapped on the top of her desk with his knuckles, a sheepish and unspoken apology. "It's going to be okay, Malcolm. Whatever it is," she said.

He scrubbed his hands through his hair and down his face. "Yeah," he said unconvincingly, and went back to his office.

Malcolm was considering finding a drink somewhere before flying back to his unit (which was a bad fucking idea--his group wouldn't be impressed if he told them he'd had a drink or ten because it had been a _bad fucking day_ ), when the Osgoods knocked on his door.

"Hey Malc," they said, in weird-as-fuck unison. And _god_ , he just wanted to let it go. He wanted to tell Scarfy One, dressed in the question mark jumper, and Scarfy Two, wearing a new coat that looked like it had been shat on by a fucking unicorn, that he was just glad to see them and they could fuck off home to knit scarves or twat each other with dildos or whatever the fuck they did together.

"That is a fucking loud coat," Malcolm told Scarfy Two, without feeling, and gestured at the guest chairs.

"You have concerns," Scarfy One said as they sat.

"I have fucking concerns," Malcolm said dully, pinching the bridge of his nose. "What happened yesterday in the Black Archive?"

The Osgoods looked at him, sympathetic understanding in their eyes. "Malc, do you trust us?" Scarfy Two asked softly.

He lifted his head and gave them a piercing stare. "No," he said.

Scarfy One shut her eyes and Scarfy Two took a shaky breath, both of them pained by his answer. "You used to," she said quietly. "When Missy killed our sister, you didn't know if the one left was human or Zygon. And you didn't care. You sat there with her in that hallway, holding her head in your lap while you both wept. When it was really bad--do you remember those terrible nights?--you sat with her in your kitchen and fed her biscuits and tea and talked her into living, even when you were higher than a kite and trying to hide it. _And she is still here_ , Malcolm, asking you to trust us."

Scarfy One continued: "Kate was magnificent, you know, in the Black Archive. Terrifying. Resolute. She walked up to the brink of war, and decided to choose peace instead. The Osgood boxes helped her see, as they always do for the honest in heart."

"Why wipe her memory, then?" Malcolm challenged.

"For the same reason that we can't tell you who we are. In case the Osgoods, and the boxes, are needed again."

Malcolm closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. "Neither one of you ever makes any fucking sense. You know that, right?"

"Trust us, Malcolm," they said together.

"Fuck," he said under his breath, and put his head wearily on his desk. "Fucking fuck me. Fine. But if the Earth fucking explodes, it's your fucking fault." He didn't lift his head, even at the touch of a hand on both of his shoulders.

"Like the boxes, the Osgoods can only convince the honest in heart. Like you," one of them said softly.

He snorted. "Not hardly."

"You should talk to Kate." He did lift his head at that, and glared at them. "Telepathic field," Scarfy Two said apologetically, gesturing between her head and her sister's. "You're in it. We can't read your mind, but we can feel your pain. Call her."

Malcolm put his head back down. "Fuck off, Scarfies," he said, without rancor. One of them gave the back of his neck a sympathetic squeeze, and they fucked off.

"Hey," Malcolm called after them. "Do me a favor and tell Kate that she was magnificent in there?"

"We already have," they said, a little sadly, and left.

Malcolm didn't realize he'd fallen asleep face down on his desk until a paper bag hit him in the back of the head. "Bagel sandwich. Two oranges. Fanta. Bottled water," Aparajita said. Then another parcel. "Clean uniform and kit, razor, shaving cream. Your chopper leaves in 45 minutes; that's time to use the good showers down in the gym and feel human again.

"I just might fucking kiss you," Malcolm said gratefully.

"You are so not my type," she teased. Then her voice faltered. "Be safe, Malc," she said. "We won the Zygon thing, I'm told, but it's been fraught around here. Everyone is tired of losing people. Don't add your name to the list."

"Yeah," he said noncommittally, standing up. "See you when I get back. Another week, probably, maybe a little longer. Hold the place together for me."

The showers were blessedly empty when he arrived. Malcolm put his loaded sidearm in a locker, then took off his jacket and tossed it over a bench, the barely-tolerated insignia on the shoulders clacking against the wood. Full colonel now. He hadn't earned anything up to the last promotion, but he supposed in the last year he had earned the second star. He still didn't like it. He frowned at himself in the mirror. Short hair, buzzed military tight because it was just fucking easier these days. Maybe, with the Zygon mess sorted, he could go back to looking like himself. Other than the fact that his hair had gone past silver sometime in the last few months and was well on its way to white. Beard too, he thought, scraping off the stubble. He'd look like Father Fucking Christmas if he grew it out.

The door opened, and his breath caught in surprise when two arms wrapped around his chest.

"Men's shower," Malcolm said lightly.

"Mmm," Kate answered, her face pressed into his back. "Closed for private maneuvers by senior personnel. The Osgoods are guarding the door."

"The Osgoods? That's fucking terrific. They suggested this, didn't they? The perverts. And I thought you were pissed at me."

"I am pissed at you. But I haven't seen you in eight fucking weeks. And the batteries died in my vibrator this morning so ..."

Malcolm wiped the shaving cream off his face and turned around to look at her, his expression melancholic. "Kate, look, love, I'm sor--"

"No," she interrupted him, and pulled his shirt over his head. "No, don't apologize--Christ Malcolm, did you forget to eat this month?--" she shook her head at his skinny self, then continued. "Don't apologize. You're asking the right questions. You're asking the questions I'd ask, if I were in your position. You're a fucking dick, but you're right to ask them."

"I talked to the Osgoods," he said. "And I still fucking hate the Doctor, but I'm willing to trust them."

Kate ran her hands up his chest. "As best we can tell, the Osgoods really have consummated another voluntary bioidentical imprint. Not just the body, not just the telepathic field, but synchronized synaptic sequencing. They are Osgood, regardless of whether either is human." Kate sighed. "As for the Doctor, the truth is, if we've been betrayed, there is nothing we could do. If the Doctor is done protecting the Earth, then we're through. Even with everything UNIT does, Earth is still a minor and weakly-armed player in the universe. The Doctor has been Earth's friend since the day she was formed, if his stories are to be believed, and I have to trust him. I do trust him, even if it fucking _hurts_ that he doesn't trust me, especially when I don't even know what I've done to disappoint him."

Malcolm paused where he was unbuttoning her blouse. "Maybe nothing," he said quietly. "Maybe you haven't disappointed him at all. Maybe, like your Da, he trusts that you'll trust him when he can't give you the real answers."

"I hope so," Kate said softly, going to work on Malcolm's belt. "Fucking seriously, Malc, she said reprovingly, noticing it was in two notches from normal. "Man cannot survive on citrus and caffeine-based products alone."

He scowled at her. "Are we going to have a shag or a lecture?"

"I am perfectly capable of multitasking," she said, and slipped out of her trousers.

"I'm ... not," he said, brain stuttering over the barely-there red lingerie Kate was wearing, which he was fairly certain he'd purchased. He swallowed hard. "Kate," he said hoarsely as she finished stripping him and he helped her out of her bra. "We still have a military problem. Walsh and company are distrustful of this peace. And she's convinced that you've got your ladycock up my arse. Which, to be fair ..."

"I do," Kate said, palming him hard while he gasped. "I'll sort Walsh and the military. But Walsh is right about one thing," she said, boosting herself up onto the washroom counter and giving him an impish smile before ghosting her lips over his ear. "I really can't keep my knickers dry."

"Perhaps," he said, fingers sliding over, then under, the evidence darkening the silk. "Perhaps I should take them off for you."

"Perhaps you fucking should."

He happily obeyed, one long-fingered hand easing the silk down her legs, the other more gainfully engaged. "And now what, boss?" he asked huskily, fingers lingering.

In response, she spread her knees, grabbed his arse, and pulled him deep.

"Fucking _fuck_ , Kate," he groaned, hands coming up to support her legs and hips while she arched back as far as the narrow counter would allow. "You are so fucking beautiful," he murmured, hips rolling now, sliding his lips up her belly, her breasts, her throat. And: " _Jesus, fuck_."

"Alright there, Malcolm?" she asked innocently, widening herself and subtly pushing his pace until he was gasping. He was deep, and just where she needed him. She threw her head back, not nearly in control as she was pretending to be. "Fuck, you feel so fucking good."

"If you ... don't slow the fuck down, this is going to be really disappointing for the lady in charge," he managed.

She kicked a leg over his shoulder to free one of his hands, and he stifled a deep moan against the inside of her knee. "Then fucking _use your fingers_ , Malc," she said urgently.

"There, Kate?" he growled, knowing damn well his thumb was _exactly_ there. Fuck the Osgoods guarding the door and their wank material, she'd scream if she wanted to.

And oh, _oh God_ ... "there ..." she gasped."...and you are too." He collapsed forward, panting between her breasts, half standing while she held him and relished the too-rare-of-late rush of him. Bed would have been nicer than the hard counter, with a sink faucet between her shoulder blades, but she'd take _him_ (and fucking _take_ him) anywhere.

"Fuck, Kate," he finally managed, and kissed her, hard. She laughed at him and traced the angles of his face.

"Fifteen minutes until your flight," she said, pushing him shakily upright with a hand on his chest. "Time enough for you to take a shower and give your girlfriend a third orgasm before you go."

He lifted his eyebrows. "Third? Did I miss one?"

"Fucking _wet knickers_ , Malc. Courtesy of your exceptionally vivid imagery outside my office an hour ago."

He grinned down at her. "Another week. Maybe two," he said. "Then I'm fucking coming home, no matter what my boss says."

"I'll have a word with her," Kate answered, and pushed him into the closest shower. "But first, lets put that naughty tongue of yours to more good work."

Afterwards, he'd fist-bumped the smirking Osgoods on the way out the door and kissed Kate sweetly on the tarmac. And later, giving in to sex-heavy sleep on the rocky flight back to the field and his lonely bunk, Malcolm decided that maybe, just maybe, they might survive this year after all.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Night We Began to Heal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6662386) by [Nehszriah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nehszriah/pseuds/Nehszriah)




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